Setting Design vs Adventure Prep

[ShinHakkaider]

I don't think either is wrong, but I enjoy and find more use(for my playstyle) with at least minimal setting design. My question to you is what about when the PC's do something you don't expect...What exactly is considered a crime in Diamond Lake...Who governs Diamond Lake...Are we allowed to carry any weapon out in the open in Diamond Lake?These are all things that are reasonable questions for a PC to ask starting out. I think there is a difference in micro and macro setting design, but they're both still setting design.

In my specific case I told my players I'm running this adventure path from Dungeon Magazine so there's a certain expectation that they'll follow the adventure hooks that have been laid out for them. My job at this point is making those hooks matter to their characters. Also fortunately, the AP has suppliments that give an idea of how to answer those questions that you posed so that's not really much of an issue.

This gets into level of detail, but IMHO it's still useful to have at least a general sense of how things in my world work. It's sort of like game rules, they don't cover everything, but a good set will let you reasonably and logically draw conclusions for things not covered.

True I can see how that would be useful and I do give a general idea of that, but only a general idea. I don't hit them with information that would be compeletly irrelavant to thier characters. Which is why I give my PC 's information that thier characters would generally know, but only when requested if they want more detail then I'll put something together in more detail.

My question is this do people who don't do setting design assume their PC's will go with the adventure they have designed? I have found that this isn't always the case. In a setting I can have numerous seeds(fleshed out or not fleshed out as fits my playstyle) that the PC's can choose to explore. If I design just the adventure then that kind of almost forces my PC's to go that route, and what if what I think would make a good adventure isn't what they want to follow up on? What if in your campaign above they start out for the Free City right away...or is this not an option?

As I said upthread I run slightly modified pre-written adventures and I let my players know this before hand. So they understand this before they even sit at the table and create characters. I dont tell them the name of the adventure or the expected levels or who wrote it or where it's from. The idea is to actually JUST PLAY, instead of talking about playing. I let them know, if youre looking for some free form game that let's you go and do whatever you want at any given time, that they need to look elsewhere. It's not that I can't run that type of game or never have run that type of game. I just don't like running that type of game and I find that it takes too much energy for too little reward as a DM.

Also I typically have a busy week. It's better for me to just be able to read up on and make notes about the adventure that I'm going to be running on the train to and on the way from work. That's one adventure as opposed to memorizing the details of an entire setting or city. That's maybe 2 or 3 hooks to get them involved in one adventure that's fully fleshed out and statted and detailed as opposed to a bunch of hooks that may lead to a few fully stated or half setup possible adventures.

Yeah a balance is definitely the way to go, but I've seen more "setting is useless posts" than "adventure design" is useless posts in this thread. I don't think those advocating a setting are saying adventure design is useless, just that well, IMHO setting design is just as important.

True. I do think setting design is important too. It's just that we differ on when the bulk of the design should come: before the game even starts or once the game gets rolling and catering to the players specific interests. This in itself has a lot of x factors to take into consideration pending on your players. For instance,
if youre running a FR game and your players know alot about the FR setting then that's a case of preprep that you as a DM and your players are comfortable with and there's really nothing wrong with that.
On the other hand I don't think that there's anything wrong with running a pre-written adventure that only details the adventure site and another location (like a town or a city)and eventually building a setting around that as the need arises.

They both use settings to some effect, in the first the DM is comfortable with the established and the players are happy to be usung an established setting and the second the DM is comfortable with allowing the PC's interests to flesh things out abit.

This statement seems to argue for more setting prep and less adventure design. If the setting is fleshed out it's easier to know what the PC's are going to encounter when they go off on a tangent. I don't see how the actions of your players(as described above) advocate advenure design over setting design.

I dont know whether I'm not being clear or youre simply not understanding what I'm saying. I'll just leave it at this: Site based adventures work better for me as a starting point for a possible campaign. I've tried the fleshing out before hand route which just resulted in me coming up with a lot of things that the players just ignored to go follow some throwaway detail that I mentioned at some point. So unless you've prepared for every possible tangent that your players can think of to go off on, your method is really no better than mine. You don't see how that works that's fine. But I'm telling you it's been my experience, that for me, doing a bunch of setting prep before hand has been a waste of my time.

 

[buzz]

If the setting is fleshed out it's easier to know what the PC's are going to encounter when they go off on a tangent. I don't see how the actions of your players(as described above) advocate advenure design over setting design.

A number of people have been making this point about "being prepared for when the players diverge from the expected." Thing is, I don't really see what setting design has to do with that.

I mean, when someone says "setting design" to me (at least in a D&D context), I'm thinking: continental maps, major religions, elvish history, monster demographics, royal lineages, etc.

If you mean, "fleshing out the town where the adventure begins," or "possible encounters within ten miles of the dungeon entrance," then that's not setting design. That's adventure design.

On top of this, I'm not sure how many groups are generally comfortable with so totally kibboshing the DM's prepped scenario that he needs to whip out his world map and think about elvish history. I would think that a healthy group would have a tacit understanding that, yes, they're going to participate in the adventure Sarah the DM worked on for tonight's game.

(Or, alternately, that everyone's agreed that sessions begin with the players providing direction that the DM then uses to wing encounters. I.e., the campaign is about the PCs going off on tangents.)

If your adventure notes are of no use when faced with players throwing you a curve ball, you're scripting the scenario too strongly. If your players are constantly dismissing what you've prepped to wander off to anywhere but the main adventure, you need to tell them to stop being dicks.

 

[Brazeku]

But that's still useless, and the players still can't touch it - until you detail the caves east of Arthalia. So why not cut out the middle man and just go create said caves from the start? After the caves are created (and a dozen over adventure environments or non-status quo adventures), then maybe it's time to decide where the lamps came from, if you still really need to.

This is preparing for a game of D&D, not writing some history/sociology/anthropology/geopolitical/monsterology thesis.

Because the lamps are the hook, and setting elements like them are there to provide integration. They are what the party experiences in order to attract them to a possible route. I do not plan what my players are going to do, but of course the caves would be detailed if the players express interest. There's also a timing factor: if you have lead ins, it gives you time to prep the elements that they're going to run into when they begin moving along a pathway. Having hooks actually reduces my workload, while at the same time allowing for setting consistency and player choice.

EDIT: I don't think that when I say setting design, I'm talking about the same thing as what other people hear when they hear setting design. Really my settings are just integrated adventures and possible pathways. By having adventures integrated into the broader 'setting,' it allows player actions in an adventure to impact the environment dynamically. When the players' actions impact a setting, the setting shifts and provides openings for new adventures automatically. Basically, I just want to be sure that adventures don't exist in a vacuum.

 

[Imaro]

A number of people have been making this point about "being prepared for when the players diverge from the expected." Thing is, I don't really see what setting design has to do with that.

I mean, when someone says "setting design" to me (at least in a D&D context), I'm thinking: continental maps, major religions, elvish history, monster demographics, royal lineages, etc.

If you mean, "fleshing out the town where the adventure begins," or "possible encounters within ten miles of the dungeon entrance," then that's not setting design. That's adventure design.

On top of this, I'm not sure how many groups are generally comfortable with so totally kibboshing the DM's prepped scenario that he needs to whip out his world map and think about elvish history. I would think that a healthy group would have a tacit understanding that, yes, they're going to participate in the adventure Sarah the DM worked on for tonight's game.

(Or, alternately, that everyone's agreed that sessions begin with the players providing direction that the DM then uses to wing encounters. I.e., the campaign is about the PCs going off on tangents.)

If your adventure notes are of no use when faced with players throwing you a curve ball, you're scripting the scenario too strongly. If your players are constantly dismissing what you've prepped to wander off to anywhere but the main adventure, you need to tell them to stop being dicks.

Different playstyles is all I can really say.

I like my players to explore what they want to explore(chalk it up to too much White Wolf )...you want to get involved with the politics between the Asssin's Guild and the Thieve's Guild go for it, You want to explore the swamps in the southern island of Zanaras get a boat. You wanna work your way up into high society, I'm all for it. I design the world and my players(through their actions) tell me what aspects they want to explore. I already know what the feelings, leaders and key players of the guild are a well as why things stand the way they do between the two, I know who's who in the nobility and what house they belong too, and I know what awaits them at the island of Zanaras.

I don't think them doing this is being a dick or intentionally trying to disrupt the game. We like to play a certain way, mood, theme, history(in small spurts) are all enjoyable to my players. Do they want me to hand them a 200pg setting book to read? No. Will a dwarf PC ask me what race's architecture a certain structure has...it's happened before. In the end I like giving them this freedom, but it's different strokes for different folks, I'm not saying what you do is wrong just giving an alternative viewpoint.

 

[buzz]

I don't think them doing this is being a dick or intentionally trying to disrupt the game.

Oh, I agree. Like I said in my post, this is perfectly fine if it's the group's expectation. This seems to be the case for your group.

 

[Mark CMG]

On top of this, I'm not sure how many groups are generally comfortable with so totally kibboshing the DM's prepped scenario.

In the best of all cases, when I DM a campaign (as opposed to a one-shot), the players are not aware of a "prepped scenario" and go about their business persuing their own goals and finding adventure where they may. I prefer to have a setting prepared and allow the players to explore it as they will. It's probably why I have run so few store-bought adventures over the last 30+ years and probably why, when I do, it is more along the lines of a mini setting with an adventure overlay. It might also be why the dungeon-as-adventure format proved so popular; it is actually a setting wherein, in many cases, lies adventure, rather than an adventure. I've also run one-shots where the players opted to go in directions unanticipated and to which I had to respond with adventures and challenges drawn from setting materials rather than what I had planned specifically for that game.

 

[rounser]

Because the lamps are the hook, and setting elements like them are there to provide integration. They are what the party experiences in order to attract them to a possible route. I do not plan what my players are going to do, but of course the caves would be detailed if the players express interest. There's also a timing factor: if you have lead ins, it gives you time to prep the elements that they're going to run into when they begin moving along a pathway. Having hooks actually reduces my workload, while at the same time allowing for setting consistency and player choice.

Adventure hooks can be sublimated by the adventure design process, and probably should be because they make them much easier to design; you don't need setting to create a hook. I'd also suggest that you've put the cart before the horse; the setting should bow to the needs of the adventure and the hooks it requires, rather than the other way around. After all, the adventure is where the PCs spend most of their time (interacting with encounters and situations), whereas the setting is mere backdrop to that action.

After the adventure and it's hook needs are decided upon, a setting can be created which integrates them even more thoroughly, because adventures generally aren't as easily made plastic as settings can be (mainly because adventures tend to have more plot structure and fiddly gamist components, making them a lot harder to design than the sweeping macro-level statements of setting design).

Let's face it: The most easily gamed and designed setting for D&D is a big dungeon with no "overworld" - PCs can be funnelled to appropriate challenges, and the areas to detail are finite. Wildernesses present problems because they are so large and cannot funnel PCs to prescribed locations and challenges commensurate with their level. Urban areas present problems because they involve hundreds to thousands of NPCs and buildings, such that they too can only really be dealt with in the abstract.

It's all far too much work, so your choices are to improvise the game off-the-cuff, restrict the setting to a small area, or railroad the campaign from one adventure to the next. Mix that with the desire for epic grandeur so heavily associated with fantasy writing, and it's no wonder that many DMs attempt to sidestep the problem entirely by designing empire and race overviews and big world maps, and hope that the nitty gritty of actually running the game takes care of itself, perhaps preparing a dungeon for the next session as an afterthought. What a waste.

 

[Imaro]

Adventure hooks can be sublimated by the adventure design process, and probably should be because they make them much easier to design; you don't need setting to create a hook. I'd also suggest that you've put the cart before the horse; the setting should bow to the needs of the adventure and the hooks it requires, rather than the other way around. After all, the adventure is where the PCs spend most of their time (interacting with encounters and situations), whereas the setting is mere backdrop to that action.

After the adventure and it's hook needs are decided upon, a setting can be created which integrates them even more thoroughly, because adventures generally aren't as easily made plastic as settings can be (mainly because adventures tend to have more plot structure and fiddly gamist components, making them a lot harder to design than the sweeping macro-level statements of setting design).

Let's face it: The most easily gamed and designed setting for D&D is a big dungeon with no "overworld" - PCs can be funnelled to appropriate challenges, and the areas to detail are finite. Wildernesses present problems because they are so large and cannot funnel PCs to prescribed locations and challenges commensurate with their level. Urban areas present problems because they involve hundreds to thousands of NPCs and buildings, such that they too can only really be dealt with in the abstract.

It's all far too much work, so your choices are to improvise the game off-the-cuff, restrict the setting to a small area, or railroad the campaign from one adventure to the next. Mix that with the desire for epic grandeur so heavily associated with fantasy writing, and it's no wonder that many DMs attempt to sidestep the problem entirely by designing empire and race overviews and big world maps, and hope that the nitty gritty of actually running the game takes care of itself, perhaps preparing a dungeon for the next session as an afterthought. What a waste.

OKAY, soooo...you like dungeoncrawls? Others may not.

 

[S'mon]

Wildernesses present problems because they are so large and cannot funnel PCs to prescribed locations and challenges commensurate with their level. Urban areas present problems because they involve hundreds to thousands of NPCs and buildings, such that they too can only really be dealt with in the abstract. .

I've had a lot of success with my current pbem wilderness campaign where I designed a "wilderness as dungeon", throwing in everything cool I could think of, with obvious trails/routes to funnel PCs. You put the low level stuff (goblins) close to the home base, further away are ogres and dire wolves, further still are giants and dragons.

You can do similar setting-as-dungeon with an urban setting, as in City State of the Invincible Overlord.

 

[rounser]

OKAY, soooo...you like dungeoncrawls? Others may not.

No, no, no, quite the opposite. I'm just stating that dungeon crawls are the most easily designed and run format for a D&D adventure. Big difference.

Dungeon crawls mostly bore me, and when I prep for D&D I spend a lot of time trying to turn wilderness and urban environments into manageable environments to support adventure.

Wilderlands with it's hex wilderness and Lankhmar: City of Adventure with it's geomorphs go some way towards providing examples of how the wilderness and urban environments can be "dungeonised" to a certain extent. Both geomorphs and hexes granularise otherwise abstract areas of complex environments, and they can then be detailed in a similar fashion to a dungeon room. Such measures potentially improve the potential of cities and wildernesses to act as interactive adventuring environments, but there are other problems which lead to them usually being treated in the abstract (such as redundancy, whereby PCs may totally bypass a prepared area, and the aforementioned hundreds of NPCs in urban areas - again usually improvised).

It's all very well to plonk down megaopolises and hundreds of thousands of miles on a world map, plus thousands of years of history and culture and politics on some campaign notes somewhere, but what's the point if the only unwishy-washy areas of the world are some dungeons or a railroaded adventure path? This is a problem with D&D campaign design which is rarely addressed, so it's interesting to see this thread confronting it to an extent.